L2 accent. Emotions on the matter of graduate student instructors in the
classroom sometimes run very high. The following examples all originate
at the University of Michigan, during my tenure there:
A more recent experience concerns my daughter, a recent graduate of
the engineering college. Most of her undergraduate experience was
with TAs, many of whom were ill equipped to communicate the
language let alone ideas. For $10,000 a year in out-of-state tuition we
expected more.
(Fall 1993; letter to the “Alumni Voices” section of the University of
Michigan LSA magazine)The ONE problem with Ann Arbor (aside from construction, too
many coffee shops): Graduate Student Instructors who don’t know
how to speak English.
(From a column in the student paper, The Michigan Daily, April 18,
1996)Of course it’s hard to understand them, and of course I resent it. Why
can’t I get what I pay for, which is a teacher like me who talks to me
in my own language that I can understand?
(From a questionnaire distributed annually to incoming students in a
linguistics course)The issues raised here, directly and indirectly, have to do with unmet
student expectations. One set of expectations has to do with the contract
between student and university, both formal and implied. Whether or not
that contract is fairly interpreted to include student preferences on the
nationality or ethnicity of instructors and faculty cannot be taken up here.
What is relevant to this discussion are the issues of accent,
comprehensibility, and communication.
In response to complaints from the University of Michigan student body
on this issue, the university administration took a number of steps to
ensure that graduate student instructors were indeed prepared to teach in
English. The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, in
cooperation with the English Language Institute, also provided extensive
training for teaching assistants whose first language was not English,